Lao She, author of this short story and one of the masters of 20th century Chinese fiction, eschewed literary complexity in favor of more colloquial prose that focused on the lives of ordinary people. This made him one of the more accessible writers of his generation: anyone who can read this should be able to get through Camel Luotuo, the depressing novel about a downtrodden Beijing rickshaw driver that made Lao an international celebrity two years after he penned this piece.

Although this story is not exactly what we'd call upbeat, the ending is characteristically ambivalent and those of us in the office are torn over how to interpret it. Does the bird die or live? And what - if anything - is the final sentence supposed to mean? If you think you've cracked the puzzle, we'd welcome you to share your ideas by email, or in the comments section below.

Glad you like it, vladimir. I'm curious myself if the story was intended as social commentary, since assuming the bird makes it the lesson would seem to be "keep your head down and you've got a shot", which squares pretty nicely with the Chinese belief in 打枪出头鸟, but isn't exactly a comforting moral philosophy.

We're planning to release some stories next that don't involve animal or human suffering, since we're 4/4 for misery at this point. We have the next two planned, welcome suggestions on the rest, so let us know if you run into anything you think would be a particularly good selection.

It's a nice video, and Echo complimented your accent as well. Interesting approach to learning too with all of the visual reinforcement of the words (some of the images stuck in my mind, with the translations as well).

Perhaps we should be looking at helping people automate the creation of this sort of thing. How long did it take to put together?

Not too long (once I worked out a workflow). I think the effort to make it has made me remember the words more than actually watching it. Finding appropriate pictures probably took the longest time. Once I had all the pictures in iPhoto, I just had to drop them into iMovie, add some captions and record the audio.

anyone can give me an English version etext of Lao Shes the Yellow Storm? (Si Shi Tong Tang?) I have heard so many times about it and I really want to take a look. What a pity that Gutenberg has few Chinese writings.